A window on nature

I was just looking through the folder where I kept notes for my newsletter, which I started sending out in March of 1979, and pretty much discontinued in 2005. Lots of odds and ends never made it into the newsletter. I've decided to trot out a few of the fairly recent ones, dating from when I was living in my cold, leaky but wonderful cabin-on-the-lake in East Winthrop, Maine. The lake was the Cobbosseecontee, shortened by everyone to Cobbossee. I was forever being treated to scenes that delighted me, driving along the road that led in from the two-lane highway to the unpaved road that in turn led to the camp where my cabin was located, driving along various back roads when I just felt like exploring the neighborhood, even just looking out the window of my cottage. To wit:

When I first moved to the cabin from the motel where I'd been staying I was arriving late in the evening, and it was quite windy. My headlights lit up masses of dry, late autumn leaves that were being swept across the road, up, over, around, turning the road into a tunnel of swirling leaves. And there was perfect, vigorous musical accompaniment on the radio -- Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Made it seem like I was starting out on this exciting adventure.

One day in early spring I glanced out my window and saw a perky squirrel sitting upright on a branch, its tail a bushy question mark, looking just like all those cartoons. Then it took a flying leap to another tree and the air filled with dust, lit up by the sun. Dust? A few minutes later a car drove down the road to another of the cabins, and I saw that it was covered with a fine green film. The light went on in my head: the "dust" I had seen was tree pollen, being transferred by one of natures transport agencies.

Another sign of spring: two bugs copulating on the window pane. It looked like forcible rape to me -- she kept trying to scoot away, he kept pulling her along in the other direction. When I hit the pane they both froze, played dead ("Shhh. Somebody's seen us.")

One winter's day I drove into Winthrop proper. Flawlessly blue sky, bright sun, the ground and trees covered with recent snowfall, but the roads clear. Out on the lake in town (Maranacook -- another great Indian name) there were scattered ice-fishing huts, the occasional snow mobile speeding across the snow-covered surface. At the edge of the lake some folks had cleared a small area of snow, turning it into an ice-skating rink. All those people out there enjoying the day, despite the 24 degree temperature. But 24 degrees with sunshine and no wind feels good to northerners dressed for it. And all of this was accompanied by the beautiful, peaceful music, with just a touch of the melancholy to it, that was playing on my car radio. When the piece ended I learned it was Dvorak's 9th symphony. Perhaps he wrote it on just such a day. It went so perfectly with the day, the scene, that I almost cried.

Another day in winter I watched snow dust being wafted through the air from the snow-laden pine and hemlock trees around the cabin on a wind that was really nothing more than a breath. The earth breathed, and the trees sighed.

And this was my reaction when I got home late one night, and stood for a moment in the dark, listening to the silence that was interrupted by a waxing and waning wind:

"I love the sound of the wind coming through the trees toward you -- like rushing water -- and it sounds so strong you're surprised that the trees around you move so little when it arrives. Sound...the great deceiver."